Professor Chinsembu Challenges HEIs to Address the Problem of Suicide
Higher Education Authority (HEA) Director-General, Professor Kazhila C. Chinsembu, has thrown down the gauntlet to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to address the rise in suicides and suicide ideation in Zambia.
Professor Chinsembu said that it was important for higher education to address this problem suicide through programmes which tackle this at its core.
“We need to mount programmes that will help us view suicide as a mental health issue so that we begin to bring awareness of mental health to higher education,” Professor Chinsembu said.
The Director-General emphasised that for higher education to effectively contribute to national development, first and foremost, it needed to healthy individual and this could only be done by HEIs addressing mental health.
“Health is wealth and for us to talk about the impact of higher education in producing wealth for the country and doubling our GDP, we first need healthy individuals,” he said, continuing, “And within this narrative of health we need to focus on mental health because mental health has become a serious problem in our country.”
The Director-General was speaking when he appeared on the first-ever episode of HEA’s The Higher Education Hour, which airs every Monday at 18:15hrs on Lusaka Radio 97.7FM.
Professor Chinsembu made these remarks coming off a tragedy that befell HEA when it lost one of its Members of Staff to suicide on Monday, 30th September, 2024, at his home in Lusaka.
Professor Chinsembu remarked on the importance of recognising and addressing suicide ideation.
“When suicide ideation is taking place in an individual, it is only noticeable when they pass on,” he said, adding, “So we need to do much more during the state of suicide ideation so that we can help individuals facing these mental health issues.”
Suicidal ideation refers to thoughts, ideas or preoccupations about ending one’s own life and can range from fleeting considerations to detailed planning, but not all individuals experiencing suicidal ideation act on these thoughts.
According to a report by Conrad Mwango published on Phoenix FM’s Facebook page, Zambia has experienced a “640 percent spike in suicide cases in 2024.” The report further states that, as of October 2024, Lifeline Childline Zambia, an organisation that offers counselling and guidance services, recorded 3,616 cases of suicide thoughts, attempts, and successful cases combined this year, compared to just 565 in the entire 2023.
The Higher Education Hour debuted on 21st October, 2024, with Professor Chinsembu setting the tone for the show outlining his transformative agenda of higher education.
The Higher Education Hour is HEA’s weekly live, phone-in radio show which delves deeper into the Authority’s mandate and addresses how HEA is “Ensuring Quality in Higher Education.”
Apart from featuring experts from the Authority, the show presents a platform for HEA to interact with organisations with which it collaborates. This is important in order to highlight the one of the Authority’s core tenants that upholding standards in higher education is not a lone battle for HEA but one that it collaborates with appropriate government institutions to do so in order to achieve the aspirations of the 8th National Development Plan for education. HEA’s the Higher Education Hour is brought to you with the generous support of Lusaka Music Radio 97.7FM.
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